It is now four years since Norway formally embarked on the difficult task of facilitating negotiations in the protracted ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. With an international record in peace-making and development assistance, Norway entered the fray with unmatched legitimacy. Unlike Norway's previous efforts aimed at brokering peace, the Sri Lankan facilitation was undertaken by assigning a conspicuous role to key governmental functionaries, and was less secretive in nature. Although a ceasefire has been signed and six rounds of talks between the government and the Tamil Tigers have been held, Norway's third-party role has been criticized by nationalists for being partial towards the Tigers, and by a section of peace activists for focusing on a minimalist agenda of peace. In this article, I examine the qualifications and motivations of Norway as a facilitator and also the different perceptions that the key stakeholders have about its third-party role. Furthermore, I assess the nature of the Norwegian efforts so far and the hurdles ahead for taking the peace process forward.

Robert W. Cox’s contribution to International Relations theory places the discipline in a transformational framework. Building on Gramsci’s ideas and a variety of other sources eclectically, his theory goes beyond the neorealist statecentric framework and brings out the connections between material conditions, ideas and institutions in what he terms the formation of ‘world orders’. How people organize themselves in the sphere of production not only determines their own life but also that of their states and the world order. In saying that change can come from any one of the spheres (material conditions, ideas and institutions), he denies and goes beyond the base–superstructure thesis of Marxism. Cox identifies creation of a vibrant civil society, emergence of organic intellectuals representing the marginalized, development of community-level solidarity, participatory democracy, non-violent methods of conflict resolution, pluralism and multilateralism as key elements of his transformational agenda. This essay explores Cox’s main ideas relating to transformational international relations and the strategies envisaged for transformation.

This article traces the evolution of the African Union as a successor organisation to the Organisation of African Unity in terms of its mandate for conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peacemaking and peace-building. The Union has established a continent-wide peace and security architecture through its Peace and Security Council. The paper looks at the different elements of this architecture with special focus on peacekeeping operations and institutions such as the Early Warning Mechanism, Peer Review Mechanism, Panel of the Wise and the Standby Force, which together constitute the support structure of the Council. The regional economic communities are the building blocks of this architecture creating something like a ‘multi-layered security community’. They function synergistically by acting as conduits of policy implementation of the Union. Finally, it also identifies some of the hurdles ahead of the organisation to realise a robust peace and security architecture on the continent.

This article looks at the performance of the Women Component Plan (WCP) introduced at the local level in Kerala to encourage participatory planning by studying the experience of five village panchayats over a 10 year reference period. There has been a marked difference among projects carried out under the WCP and general sector projects and projects meant for Scheduled Castes in expenditure efficiency. The article also looks at the nature of projects implemented, the extent of participation of women members in their design and execution, and the opinion of elected representatives on the usefulness of the WCP.

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